Art, Identity and Right Wing Historiography

 

Art, Identity and Right Wing Historiography 

Art for Art’s sake or Art for the sake of society. This literary dichotomy hinges on cultural reclamation and historical consciousness of human tribe. The Harlem Renaissance thrived on the Great migration of African-Americans created a literary space in post-civil right movements of America and the world. What is here more significant is neither revolt nor revolution, but internalisation of identity and human sensibilities. Throughout civilisational history, it had been the consciousness of identity that shaped society, established empires and produced theories and hypothesis. In a bit of instance, how the West saw the East through the tool of knowledge and power is theorised by Edward Said in his seminal work ‘Orientalism’.  The lens used by the West to look at the East with presumptions of exotic, irrationality and cultural sickness exposes the biases of Western knowledge system.  In one aspect, when we look at the works of Coleman Barks and other western scholars, we find sexualisation of Rumi’s work and spiritual de-islamisation. Maulana Rumi, indeed continues to hold his relevance through spiritualism, mysticism, absolute surrender to God and remembrance to God finds a juxtapositional academic influence in the ambit of Christianity per se West. The Western scholars posits spiritual texts as western romantic literary couplets with an intent to malign Rumi’s work and other Islamic Sufis. The west in academic space applies - ‘what cannot be defeated; can be maligned’.

The development of post-colonial literatures, across the world, from Chinua Achebe to Salman Rushdie - there lies a commonality of subjects wherein textual tension depicts lucidly. The texts and contexts highlights issues of religion, caste, creed, culture and marginalisation affecting cultural unity, civilisational continuity and fueling fractured nationalism. What has been around Great Migration can also be mirrored in case of internal migration. From the cultural race, our literary imagination can shift to socio-cultural and religious aspects. The origin of India’s Great marginalisation and systemic refusal to acknowledgement ways out to preferred future. The hue and cry of identity, selective objectification, cultural subjugation and individualism projects unexplored realities of art and serves as a powerful symbols of creativity, resistance and artistic production. The gross negligence of contrapuntal reading of India’s marginalised sect intentionally tied the nation to indigenous imperialism. As Edward said touches on the subject of how one cultural dominance over others reinforces fractured nationalism and tries to establish homogenous identity. In Orwellian Literature, this aspect is characterised by power obsessive, prestige and reclamation of past - which stands bogus. In ‘You and the Atomic Bomb’, George Orwell argues for democratisation of weapon - which metaphorically contextualised in terms of power structure and inclusivity. The democratisation of power and acknowledgement of contrapuntal readings will pave towards inclusivity. In bringing so, art has to take cardinal space both politically and socially. What cannot be political, cannot have a bearing of change. And what cannot be  socially motivated, cannot have concurrence with current imprints. 

In the arena of right wing historiography, this stands true in arguing that social stratification and systemic inequalities are inevitable for a greater cause - this cause is being justified in the trajectory of development. This is weaponisation of values and dissent. What has been sidelined as the End of Left Wing Historiography in welcoming the argumentative hypothesis of Right Wing Historiography (RWH) one must come to agreement that what once was projected as “Epistemic Violence”, now used for selective sensitisation and decolonising the mind. The RWH in order to restore old order of civilisation incessantly attempting to whitewash a long historical episode. In an attempt to wipe out and forget what is being termed ‘Heterogenous existence’ will end up producing naught. Meera Nanda in her book, “Post Colonial Theory and Making of Hindu Nationalism” argues “left-wing postcolonial theorists inadvertently handed the Hindu Right the exact vocabulary they needed to justify majoritarian nationalism”. The anatomy of this argument leads to one faction wherein we witness not a revival but suppression of one’s identity. In the process of ‘Glorification of Past’, we must not forget the fact that state has gone through myriad of changes - From socio political to technological and we cannot disown them in order to sarisfying the mass consciousness.  The question of identity per se can never be singular but it also cannot be left open ended. In the civilisational history of this world, it has always been the question of identity that produced art. It is right to say that it takes great deal of History to produce a little bit of Literature. In her work, Zora Hurston writes, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer”. Howsoever, art in any way serves the purpose of society in either deconstructing cultural milieu or producing non-conventional genre.